Cooking transformations. Traditional cuisines, gastronomic tourism and biocultural landscapes

Recognising the importance of local cuisines and food landscapes, different international organisations and local governments have developed sustainable and gastronomic tourism projects under the premise that these types of activities contribute to promoting and branding destinations, maintaining and preserving local traditions, diversity, as well as taking advantage of and rewarding authenticity. Within the framework of these actions, the EU-funded TASTE project, proposes to ethnographically investigate, from a feminist perspective and a participatory methodology, the transformations of biocultural landscapes in coastal communities by generating knowledge and reflecting on the situation of traditional food systems and contemporary issues that impact on food sovereignty and social justice. Specifically, this research questions the link between food and wine tourism and traditional cuisines (understood as biosocial, historical and social reproduction processes), and their role in the protection and revitalisation of natural environments and cultural landscapes, with particular emphasis on recognising and emphasising the role of women in the conservation of these landscapes. To this end, it will explore how food is obtained, produced, prepared and consumed in local contexts, but also how it acquires meanings beyond culinary practices, in economic circuits and which are the different actors involved in these circuits. TASTE will be developed from the comparative analysis of two case studies: Lanzarote in the Canary Islands (Spain) and Ensenada, Baja California (Mexico). Two coastal regions, with arid-desert ecosystems, valued as tourist destinations for their landscape and biocultural heritage, as well as for the importance that leisure activities based on gastronomy (eco-gastronomy), wine production (food and wine routes) and and cultural heritage (heritage of different peoples, indigenous products and innovation).